​By Paul Kolas / Telegram & Gazette ReviewerPosted Oct 24, 2015 at 1:24 PMUpdated Oct 28, 2015 at 11:59 AM​​WORCESTER — Worcester’s Sprinkler Factory is the latest venue to attract the attention of the local theater scene, and it’s an ideal one to stage something as foreboding as Henry James’ diaphanous ghost story, “The Turn of the Screw.” There is an elegant economy at hand in 4th Wall Stage Company’s production, which held an appreciative audience in hushed captivity on Friday night. Jeffrey Hatcher’s chamber piece adaptation of James’ work is more of an elaborate recitation of it than a full-bodied play, but director Robbin Joyce, and actors Briana Lynn Naughton and Jim Douglas impart its intriguing ambiguity with adult bedtime story panache, dramatic intensity and a sly touch of humor.

A mysterious narrator (Douglas) prologues the main story with one about two children and an apparition, and that he has a manuscript, a diary spanning seven days, that was given to him by a woman 10 years his senior, whom he calls his sister’s governess. Standing behind him is a woman (Lynn Naughton), with her back to the audience. As he continues his story, one which adumbrates the events that unfold during the course of this 80-minute, no intermission production, the woman slowly turns to face us, as lighting director Eric L’Ecuyer frames her austere countenance in high relief.

As the manuscript comes “to life,” Douglas’ narrator becomes The Uncle, a “handsome, charismatic bachelor in the prime of his life,” who “seduces” the job-seeking 20-year-old governess (Lynn Naughton) into caring for his niece (Flora) and nephew (Miles), on the condition that she never contact him for any reason. She is to be in complete, autonomous charge of the children. Little does she know what she’s getting herself into. Once she arrives at Bly, the spooky Gothic mansion where Mrs. Grose (Douglas) awaits her. Yes, you read that correctly. While Lynn Naughton portrays only the governess, Douglas assumes a variety of parts, including that of the 10-year-old Miles, the problem child nephew who has been sent home from school for some unspeakable act we never learn the nature of.

It’s quite amusing to watch Douglas nimbly segue back and forth from his fidgety take on Mrs. Grose to that of enigmatic, mischievous Miles. Without giving away any criminally revelatory details, we learn from Mrs. Grose that there is a sinister history behind Bly. The previous governess, a Miss Jessel, and the valet, Peter Quint, met with tragic deaths, and because of Quint’s especially gruesome demise, Flora, whom we never actually see (Douglas and Lynn Naughton giving us the pretense that she is “there”), has been rendered mute with trauma. Apparently there was a relationship between the lower class Quint and the upper class Jessel. Miles tells his governess, with creepy relish, that Quint “did things” with her.​When the governess begins seeing the specters of Quint and Jessel, she suspects that Flora and Miles are in mortal danger of being possessed, and determines to save them. Rarely has the maxim “less is more” been put to more effective use. Thanks to Lynn Naughton’s impassioned, urgent, evocative performance, we can visualize the Gothic towers of Bly, and the shimmering blue lake that surrounds it. We can feel her shiver of horror when she stares at the ephemeral visage of Miss Jessel on the lake, or that of Quint staring down at her from one of Bly’s towers. Hatcher’s illusory adaptation forces both the actors and the audience to use their imaginations to fill in the visual details, and for their part, Lynn Naughton and Douglas do all they can to hold us in thrall. It’s a ghost story that teases us with fanciful obfuscation, a delectable mirage of endless speculation, right up to the very end. Make of it what you will, but it’s a tasty Halloween treat for the literary-minded theatergoer.